


a circle in the chain

by eudaimon



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, M/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:43:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate finds himself being dragged into the end of the world and Brad is much, much more than what he seems. Loving Nate Fick will not stop Ragnarok from coming. And Brad Colbert was always a part of that story. And he's not the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a circle in the chain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Apocabigbang @LJ

(Listen: you don't have to believe in any of this shit for it to be real).

*

 

And still, the snow.

In the middle of the night, he wakes up and watches the snow falling, silhouetted in the light from another window. It's late enough that his mouth is dry. The radiators squeak and hum. In the hallway, he hears the creak of boards. Beside him, the bed is empty. Outside, the snow is gathering thickly on the sill. The wind whistles in the eaves. 

It's been three weeks without stopping.  
It's starting to feel like being buried alive.

“I know,” says Brad in the hallway, and Nate turns his head towards the noise. They drank with dinner and his head still feels fuzzy and tired. They fucked and there's still a pleasant ache in his thighs. There's warmth in him, just lying there and listening to Brad's voice. He watches as Brad paces and he catches a glimpse of him through the open door, underwear low on his ass, one hand rubbing back over his regulation short hair. Brad frowns and dips his head. “I know, but it's not like that; we can't outrun it.”

Nate closes his eyes and tells himself that he's dreaming, that any minute he'll open his eyes and see Brad lying in the bed beside him, snoring softly, and leave will never be more than snatched minutes and it will never, ever be enough.

“We'll come,” Brad's saying. “We'll see you there. Get hold of the others. Stay safe.”  
In the way of dreams, he recognises the words but can't make them make sense together.` 

Eyes squeezed shut, Nate feels the bed give when Brad sits down.

"I think I'm dreaming," he mumbles.

Brad's lips are warm against his collarbone. Nate finds it hard to pinpoint the exact moment that he knew that he was in love with Brad Colbert but he knows that it came a long, long time before the first kisses. It has something to do with desert light and the taste of dust. He knows that he fell in love a long time before he had any right to.

"You're not," says Brad, cradling his face. “And I need you to get up now, Nate.”

"Brad...."

"Not even close," he says, leaning in and kissing Nate and his mouth tastes of smoke and tiny sparks. “Get up.”

In Recon, Nate Fick learned not to trust lightly; he learned that, when he trusted someone, it should be with his whole body. And so it is with Brad. Nate's up and pulling on jeans and a hoodie, watching Brad stuffing clothes and books into duffle bags before it even occurs to him to ask where the fuck they're going. He finds his beanie and pulls it down over his hair. 

“What the fuck is happening here, Brad?” he says, because you can love someone completely, trust them with every inch of you, and still not be complacent when they try to drag you bodily into the darkest, longest winter that you can personally remember. The fact that it took him a moment to realise that doesn't make it any less true.

“I will tell you on the road,” says Brad, stepping in close, already muffled in thermal layers and reaching up to tug Nate's hat more snugly into place. “I promise you. But, for now, I need you to trust me.”

“Just tell me where we're going,” says Nate, still grudging but shouldering one of the duffle bags, too. 

Not a Marine, not anymore, but always faithful, hoo-rah.  
And there's nobody that he trusts more.

“The end of the fucking world,” says Brad, grinning as he shoulders the other bag. “Minnesota; there's a cabin. By the lake.”

And nothing makes sense.  
It's all the answer that he's likely to get. And amazingly, he's going anyway; he's out of the door, he's turning his key in the lock and he's slinging the duffle bag into the back of the car before he swings into the passenger seat. 

All the time, he's got Brad in the corner of his eye.  
The wet snow makes no sound in falling.

*

 

This is the story of how the far became near.

There was a place, a long time ago, both discovered and undiscovered, all at once. The rivers were lined with sky-tall trees. Long ago, Amerigo Vespucci mapped the world by watching the moon dance with the planets and he came to the fourth continent and he named it like a daughter, like a first-born child. But before that, they were there.

 

Back...

Before that, there were hard men in narrow boats. What they had ahead of them was long journeying, huddled together with backs to the boards, faces to the myriad stars. They froze and shuddered.

But they were made for sea-faring.

Onwards...

They drank mead until there was nothing left but the soft green water and that was when the praying time began. They carried their gods with them. It was always their way. Crows in cages meant Odin was with them. The thunder overhead was no reason to be afraid. It was many months, lying and feeding and singing in the narrow boat like babes in the womb, pissing over the side. And when they called for him in the dark it was like he was not always with them. Like they did not carry him where they went so that he would be there before them when they were strangers in a strange green land.

It wasn't a new world. They never really are. And geography is never wiped clean.

`In Minnesota; there's a cabin. By the lake. Or a house, maybe, but it was a cabin once and then, a long time before that, it was a tent on the shore-line, the corners pinned with pebbles. 

Listen: you were the only new world that I ever needed and who cares how many people were here before me. You are new enough for me.

>*

“America is a myth,” says Brad, and Nate sits in the passenger seat and watches him drive. Visibility is terrible. Brad keeps his eyes on the road. Iceman, Nate thinks. Something about knowing the cold. “It started with the Vikings but then it was the Conquistadors and the English and the French. Columbus. The pilgrim fathers.” He glances across at Nate and grins. “The gold-rush. The Wild West. John Wayne was a big fat fucking fairystory.”

Nate leans his head against the window. He loves Brad but he's already bored of riddles.  
Brad keeps his eyes on the road.

“There's no other country like this on the face of the planet,” says Brad and Nate can't quite see where this is going. Here is a man who he loves utterly, a man who he's learned utterly and, quite suddenly, doesn't understand at all. Nate closes his eyes and imagines charging around in the dark and Brad like an anchor. It helps, for a moment, but then he opens his eyes and it's just snowing, flurries of white, and he can't see anything familiar to cling to.

“Just tell me,” he says. There'll be time for stories later.  
“Almost everything you've ever heard about me is a lie,” says Brad, eyes on the road. “And I'm not the only one.”

Nate lets out a shaky breath; something about it feels an awful lot like relief; he'll deal with everything else that he's feeling later.

“Don't tell me anymore now,” he says. “Just give it to me a little at a time.”

He leans back in the seat and watches the snow. A few times, the wheels spin but Brad keeps control of the car and Nate closes his eyes. His head slips sideways against the window and he dozes and dreams about dragons that look like blizzards and Brad and a sword.

*

 

Around dawn, they're almost in Ohio, pulling up in front of a Red Roof Inn and the light hasn't really changed, grey and flat through all the snow. Nate's got a low level headache and he finds himself rubbing at his eyebrow as they trudge into the lobby side by side. Brad pays for one room on his credit card and nudges Nate in the direction of the door. They only bring one duffle between them. They won't need the books; they're too tired for reading.

Bone-weary but used to functioning despite it, Nate crouches to unlace his boots and then toes them off. He tugs his hat off and drops it on the floor. He sits down heavily with his back to the bed and cradles his heavy head in his hands.

He listens to Brad settle on the carpet beside him. The brush of Brad's nose against his cheek makes him r ecoil. He's almost ashamed of himself, like he's got no right to be angry with the man next to him.

Fuck that. He owns his anger. And Brad deserves it, if even a half of what Nate is starting to think is true.

“Lie down,” says Brad, one hand cradling the bony cap of Nate's knee through his jeans. “I'll get you something.” 

It sounds ridiculously fucking good right then.

“What are you?”  
“Something, once. But I've been me for a while now.”  
“Sergeant Brad Colbert.”

Or so the story goes.

Nate pushes up off the floor, yanks his hoodie over his head. It's impossible not to be pissed off with Brad right now; it's impossible not to care about this. He drops his hoody and toes out of his boots. He crawls into bed in his t-shirt and jeans, squirms his way out of his socks. He buries his nose in the pillow and, when Brad's hand settles between his shoulder blades, he flinches away again.

“Don't.”

He listens to the sound of Brad settling on the bed. The headboard makes a faint sound when it brushes the wall.

“Nate....”  
“I have never once fucking lied to you,” he says. And that's the key to it, really; that's why he's so angry. Because Nate Fick is never anything but honest and he thought that he had that in Brad too, but now he doesn't know what it's okay to believe.

*

 

He dreams of being out in the snow. He's wearing fur and fleece, warm things close to his skin, but he closes his eyes and he can feel his eyelashes freezing together. It's a bone-deep, old sort of cold. He sneezes.

“Bless you.”

He looks like Brad but, in his gut, Nate knows that he's not. It's not just his clothes, fur and skins stitched together, worn clothes designed to last his whole life (he's more used to Brad in camos or in jeans and t-shirts); there's something about his bearing too. The icy wind ruffles fair hair across his forehead and Nate huddles in his clothes.

“What's going on here?” he asks and the man who is not Brad Colbert shrugs his broad shoulders.  
“A lot of things,” he says, his English accented and precise. “Not all of them you're going to understand until the end.”

“I don't understand any of it,” he says. He's ashamed of how petulant he sounds, but the man takes no notice. He shifts his grip on the great iron hammer in his hand.

“They never do,” he says and then he leans in and kisses Nate, firm but sweet on the lips. It's a good kiss. He tastes of snow and ash.

He opens his eyes. The room is dark except for the light slanting in from the bathroom door, left ajar. Beside him, Brad is quiet and watchful.

“We never meant to end up like this,” he says, quietly, one hand pillowed behind his head. “We never asked to be here. We ended up here by accident. We stayed because we didn't have a fucking choice. And we've never had a choice, in anything that's followed.”

Nate shifts onto his side. Brad is shadowy and hunched on his side of the bed. Nate reaches out and nearly touches Brad's hip but lets his hand drop down against the sheet. It's an alien feeling, the not knowing how to touch – Nate's always known how to be around Brad. Sometimes, it's felt like his one comfort in a whole world of shit.

“I've heard about your childhood,” he says. “Your parents. Your sister.”

Brad nods.

“Real people have parents, Nate. Real people grow up.”  
“You said you never lied to me.”  
“How much did you ever hear me tell you, Nate? I can't help it if Ray Person needs a license for his fucking mouth.”

“Does he know?”

There's a pause and it takes Nate a moment to realise that the sound that he can hear is Brad laughing.

“Yeah, Ray knows. He's known for a long, long time.”

Nate's stomach is sour and unpleasant. He's got the feeling that this all goes much further than he can ever understand. He's looking at Brad's profile picked out in the weak light. It's like he doesn't even recognise him. He remembers being introduced to him for the first time. Did that even happen? Everything's starting to feel imagined.

“I need to know how deep this goes, Brad,” he says, face almost turned into the pillow, exhaling it into the dark. “Twelve hours ago everything was normal. Twelve hours ago, you were still a Marine, and....”

“And that hasn't changed, Nate. Semper fi; hoo-rah?”  
“Hoo-rah.”

Nate almost smiles.

“Are you going to tell me?”

He watches Brad swallow and scrub one hand back over his shaved hair.

“Me. Ray. Gunny Wynn.”  
“Mike?”

Brad gives him a look like he's waiting to continue. Nate groans softly and nods.

“Gina Espera. Ray's Beth. Doc Bryan's new wife.”  
“And they know?”

Brad gives a curt nod.

“Always.”  
“Fuck.”

Nate has never liked being kept in the dark. He feels himself go stiff and brittle. While he was in Recon, he treated Bravo like a family; it hurts in unfamiliar and unexpected ways to realise that they were keeping a secret this big from him all of this time.

“Why now?” he asks.  
“The snow,” says Brad. “It's...not a good sign.”  
“Not a good sign of what?”  
“We call it 'Fimbulvetr',” he says and Nate struggles to follow the way that his accent changes. “It's the winter before the end of the world.”

What is Nate supposed to say to a thing like that? 

Brad reaches out and touches Nate's ribs; through the thin stuff of his t-shirt he can feel the strength in Brad's fingers. He's still angry, still tense, but he doesn't shrug it off. More than anything right now he needs for Brad to be an anchor. He needs weight to fall against. He'll make peace with himself over it later.

“Just tell me,” he says, quietly. “Just tell me how it started.”

Brad shifts his weight. He reaches out to pull Nate closer; Nate doesn't pull away.

“It started like these things always do,” he says, cheek resting against Nate's hair. “Hope and a long journey. The bought us with them all of this way, past our horizon. And there were trees taller than any we'd ever seen at home but they were shot through the neck with long arrows and their bones were left here and so were we.”

“So how did you end up a Marine?”  
“Forever is a really long time to wait.”

They're quiet for a long time after that.  
When it's time to get up, Nate still hasn't figured out how to feel.

*

 

They get going again early in the weak and watery light. Nate takes the wheel and, in the passenger seat, Brad is a solid, comforting presence. He hunkers down in his jacket, mouth muffled in his dark wool scarf. There's nothing on the radio but static and, once Brad shuts it off in disgust, there's nothing but the sound of wheels on road. 

He drives in silence. The roads are treacherous and slick. He forces himself to concentrate, reminds himself of driving in Mesopotamia, unsure of rails and gutters and everything washed out with greenish light. His hands are tight on the wheel. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Brad watching him.

“You never told me about a house by a lake,” he says and he says it conversationally because maybe he's done feeling betrayed by all the things that he does and doesn't know. There's still a fight to have about it all, but now is not the time, not when he's concentrating on not killing them both on death-trap roads.

“We never told anyone,” says Brad, leaning his temple against the window. “It always for us. Somewhere to go back to. Somewhere we remembered.”

Nate nods.

“It must be lonely.”

The corner of Brad's mouth catches with a smile.

“You have no idea,” he says.

*

Listen: I was so, so lonely. And then there was you and you are new enough for me. You opened your arms to me, and my ship, the one that I had built to carry me away from other lands where I had taken wounds from which I may never heal, foundered between your thighs. You  
were my safe harbour. I spent so long looking, but, once found, you were easy to return to. I found my way back to you in a world on fire, time and time again. And there were no crows to send out across the water and there was no new found land here. I knew where you were all along.

You were always my way back.

These are things that I want to say to you, but somehow never do. The way that I learned to speak English and the way that you speak English are further apart than they ever seemed. Sex can be a language; a cobbled together pidgin tongue and you change things constantly to make yourself understand. We do a lot of talking with your hands. I've wanted to tell you why and how I came here, why I came to here so that, when the time to leave comes, it'll be easier to explain why. 

I’m going to fuck it up, I know I am, but I want to do it on my own terms and in my own time. So little of what we've ever done has been to do with us.

The far and the near were never the same place.  
And all of this was always going to end.

*

The house, when they get there, is grey against the snow, single storey and blunt beside the lake. The way Brad talked about it, Nate hadn't quite been able to picture it but there it is, with lights showing in all of the windows and a wreath nailed to the front door. In the driver's seat, the engine idling before he turns the key and kills it, Brad looks at the wreath for a long time.

“Mike's here,” he says, shoving the keys into the pocket of his jacket.

He takes one duffle bag, Nate takes the other. The path has been salted recently and the snow crunches under the soles of Nate's boots which were new when he moved to Boston but are scuffed and old now, eaten away by a couple of winters which took a long, long time to thaw, ruined by salt and moisture.

There's a metaphor about grief there somewhere.

There's a key on Brad's fob which opens the solid wood front door. In the wreath, Nate picks out acorns and fern and fir and juniper. He smells pine. Brad pauses in the doorway.

“Immortality,” he says. “Shelter. Time. Protection. Hope.” A smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Or pity.”

In Recon, Nate learned to listen to his gut; he knows enough not to ignore the shiver of dread as he walks into the house. Dropping the duffle, he pauses to unlace his boots and toe them off next to the door. Brad disappears off up the stairs. The hallway is long and dark. For a long moment, Nate is alone with familiar voices just distant.

He's utterly ashamed of himself when he realises that what he feels is small and lonely.

A shadowy figure comes into the doorway. With the light behind him, Nate can't make out his face but he'd know him anywhere, anyway; he spent so many hours sitting in the Humvee and watching that profile and trying to read minds.

“Hey, Mike,” he says. 

Mike Wynn walks down the hall with his head bent and a beer in each hand and, when he looks up, he's smiling.

“Good to see you, Nate,” he says, holding out one hand. “Thanks for comin' out. Means a lot.”  
Nate doesn't know how to say sorry – I didn't have a choice. He doesn't have as much right to be pissed at Mike; Brad will have to shoulder that alone. He takes the beer that he's offered. It's cold and it cuts through the sudden dryness in his mouth.

“Brad went...” he says, trailing off awkwardly and gesturing to the stairs. Mike nods.

“He'll do that,” he says, reaching out to take hold of Nate's shoulder and the gesture is so familiar that Nate just closes his eyes and breathes. Not everything is a lie here. It pays to keep that in mind.

In the kitchen, there's good cooking smells and music playing. Mike goes back to a seat that's obviously his. At the counter, there's a woman chopping vegetables. Nate's met her once or twice before, Sharahah Bryan with her dark rimmed eyes and bangles on her wrists. She's big with her first baby and Nate finds himself distracted by the sway of her hair as she bends her head.

“Nate Fick,” she says, a smile spreading wide. “It's good to see your face. He's lonesome without you.”

And they all know who she's talking about and they all know that it's true. 

“I can't believe I never guessed about you fuckers,” says Ray, sprawled on a broken down couch with one arm pillowed behind his head. Nate's seen the tattoos before but Ray's hair is longer than he remembers it. His dark eyes are shrewd and clear. Curled up next to him is a girl with white blond hair scraped back into a ponytail. She's wearing a First Recon hoodie and biting her thumb nail. Ray's hand is resting on her thigh and Nate watches the way his thumb strokes soothingly against worn denim. “There was some pretty fucking epic eye-fucking going on, looking back.”

“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” says Mike, fondly, turning a page in his paper. “Nate's got a lot to take in.”

“Nate will get used to it,” says Doc Bryan, at the sink and up to his elbows in suds, glancing back over his shoulder. He's got a bandanna over short hair and the sight of him is so familiar that he feels himself relax by degrees.

“Tony just called,” says Sharahah, and it takes Nate a moment to realise that she means Poke. “Him and Gina should be here in a couple of hours. So you've got time to make yourself at home and settle in.”

“Anyone would think this was your fucking house,” says Ray, but he's smiling at her when he says it.

Sharahah rolls her eyes fondly.

“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” says a voice, says Brad, stepping up behind Nate, silent on his bare feet, his shirt thin enough to cling across his shoulders and his hand coming to rest on his hip. “I'm going to take him upstairs and get him squared away. Let him sleep for a couple of hours.”

“I've got a lot of questions,” says Nate, sick of being discussed like a five year old, and Brad nods and drops a kiss onto Nate's shoulder.

“We know,” he says. “And you'll understand later.”  
“Or they'll fool you into thinking you fucking understand,” says Doc Bryan, drying his hands on a faded dishcloth. Their eyes meet for a moment. Nate decides to feel less alone for a moment.

He lets himself be drawn away.

*

 

In a small, white bathroom, Nate strips off road-dirty clothes. He remembers the joy of peeling off a sweat-stained MOPP suit. He stands naked in front of the mirror and watches Brad moving around in the bedroom outside the open door. The shower runs but takes a long time to get hot. He leans his weight on the edge of the basin.

His head aches. There's Tylenol in the side pouch of the duffle and he dry swallows two. He steps under the shower and lets the water sluice over him. He washes his hair twice. When he gets out again, a white towel wrapped around his waist, Brad's stretched out on the bed in t-shirt and underwear, a book propped open on his chest. He looks up from the book and, for a moment, he's just looking at Nate and smiling.

“Are you coming to bed?” he asks.  
“I'm thinking about it.”

Brad's looked at him like this before, countless times. It's a look that they shared in the desert and it took Nate a long time to figure out that what it meant was more than a shared mission or a common goal. It took a night after he got out of Recon and into Harvard. It took Brad Colbert turning up at his door in the pouring rain.

He drops the towel and slides into bed.

He ends up lying against Brad's side, his cheek against his shoulder. He's naked but the clothes that Brad is wearing are soft and thin. Nate fingers slip under the hem of his t-shirt and rub against the sharp jut of his hipbone.

“Tell me.”

He watches the rise and fall of Brad's chest.

“There's a lot of us,” he says. “And it's never going to be enough. Not for a fight like this.” He turns his head and kisses Nate's hair. “We came here with people that believed in us and they died and people believed in us less and less but we stayed anyway. And we always knew that this was coming.”

“What?”

“We used to call it Ragnarok,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Or þá er regin deyja. The place where the gods die. We always knew it was coming. We just....” A smile twitches the corner of his mouth. Nate leans up and kisses it. “We never expected it to be so soon.”

“Who are they all?”

Brad shifts his weight. Nate presses his palm against his hip.

“They'll tell you the stories if they want to. Mine's the only one that I've got to tell.”

When Nate closes his eyes, he feels like he's drifting. Downstairs, he can hear the faint sound of voices, Ray's louder than all the rest. He can smell dinner cooking. His fingers fist in Brad's shirt and he holds on for all that he's worth.

“I want to know,” he says.  
“Okay,” says Brad. “All right.”

And he tells Nate the whole thing. He tells him about his mother and his father, about fourteen names for himself, about being worshipped and loved. He tells him about when the time came for long journeys, for the men to drink mead until there was nothing left but the soft green water and that was when the praying really began. 

He tells Nate how they always carried their gods with them. The crows in cages mean Odin is with them, but he wasn't the only one. 

And how they were there together, strangers in a strange, green land.

“Thor,” says Nate, wonderingly, brushing his fingers against Brad's strong jaw. “I think I actually believe you. Which doesn't mean that I don't reserve the right to rip you a new asshole when I'm less tired. You fucking lied to me, Brad.”

Brad's laugh is barely a rumble in the dark of the bedroom.

“No more lies, LT,” he says.  
Nate tries to remember the last time he saw anyone praying except on a Sunday.

*

 

He sleeps deeply and doesn't remember dreaming.  
He wakes up to find Brad already gone.

He kicks one of the duffle bags clear across the room before he bends and starts to get dressed.

*

 

They sit down to dinner at a long table, laden with dishes. Sharahah presses a glass into his hand and leans forward to kiss his cheek; her hair spills over her shoulder and Nate smells incense and spice. She slips back into her seat and Nate takes a swallow from the glass. He doesn't know a lot about wine but this one tastes good, rich and deep. Brad pours them both water. Ray's already filling his plate.

“Do you have to eat like that?” asks Beth, eyebrows raised and Ray just gives her a look that Nate's seen him give Brad a hundred times.

“I'm getting my strength up, baby,” he says, taking two bread rolls from the basket. “Didn't anybody tell you that we're about to get some?”

“Seriously?” says Doc Bryan, leaning back in his chair with a beer in his hands. “Moto bullshit? Now?”

Nate can feel himself relaxing. It's like being in a Marine mess. It's like being home.  
'Like', he reminds himself, was never the same as 'is'.

They talk about nothing while they eat, make conversation about long journeys and shitty weather. Nate ends up focusing on the familiar things; the ratter-tatter cadence of Ray's sentences; the flat, amused look in Brad's blue eyes; the rumble of Doc Bryan's disapproval; Mike's small, unhurried smile. If he concentrates on things that he already knows by heart then it doesn't seem so big or ridiculous. It doesn't feel like more than he can cope with, if he just closes his eyes and listens to them talk and pretends that he's back in Iraq.

He finds himself watching the women; he doesn't know them as well as the guys, so he's trying to get the measure of them. He watches the way that Sharahah pushes at the curtain of her black, curly hair, the way she rests one hand on her bump, picks at her food like a bird but drinks a lot of water. Objectively, he can see that her nose is possibly a little too big, her brows a little too heavy. Objectively, he can see that but, when he leans back, all he can see is how beautiful she is. Despite it. It's true of Beth, too, Beth with her pale hair still scraped back, her band t-shirt and her skinny wrists loaded with black rubber bracelets. She's got a tattoo to match Ray's only it's a woman tattooed on her right bicep; it takes Nate a moment to recognise a pin-up girl with her arms folded behind her head.

Every time his glass comes close to empty, someone leans across to refill it. He starts to feel drunk but doesn't care.

When he looks up and sees Poke standing in the doorway, he's drunk enough to join in the whooping and hollering along with everybody else.

“It makes my heart heavy to break a promise to my beautiful lady,” says Poke, one hand clasped against his chest in a parody of mourning. “But, I told her, if I'm going back to the motherfucking kill-zone, there's nobody I want at my back other than these stone-cold killers right here.” 

He grins, flashing straight white teeth, and Brad stands up and offers him his hand.

“Wouldn't want anybody else at my six, Tony,” he says.  
“Jesus Christ, would you two stop being complete fucking pussies and let us get back to dinner before it gets even fucking colder?”

Nate's never met Gina Espera and she's impressive and tall as she's shrugging out of her jacket and hanging it on the rail, long silver earrings and rings on her fingers, a snake biting its own tail tattooed on her shoulder. When she leans closer to him, he sees that she's wearing a tiny human heart cast in silver around her neck.

“You must be Nate,” she says, sliding into an empty seat. 

He nods.

“When Tony found out, I thought he was going to leave me for sure,” she says, and then she reaches out and clasps his hand for a moment. “It gets easier, baby. I promise you that.”

The problem is that Nate isn't sure that he wants it to get easier than this.

They're there for a moment together, just like that, her hand clasping his and then she leans back in her chair and he reaches for his wine again. The conversation restarts. The night winds on.

*

 

When Brad steps in behind him and wraps his fingers in the hem of his t-shirt, it occurs to Nate to pull away. He folds his arms across his chest. He feels his jaw set. All evening, he's been ignoring how angry he's been. Gina says that it gets easier; Nate's spent all evening pretending that it's nothing.

And it isn't nothing. Being lied to by everyone he's known and trusted? So far from nothing.

“You're angry,” says Brad, pulling off his own shirt instead. He's tan and lithe. There's a long scar along his side that Nate's always thought that he got coming off his bike. He wonders if that's true too.

“Yes,” he says, stepping in closer, catching the back of Brad's neck and pulling him into a kiss, a deep wet kiss, that ends in a bite.

Yes. Yes, he's fucking angry.

They stay there in the middle of the room, kissing hard and hungry. Brad's hands are on his hips, pulling him forward, but there's some fight left in Nate. He won't be led. He pushes Brad back a step towards the bed. He keeps his eyes closed, rakes his nails against the bare skin in the small of Brad's back. Turning Brad in his arms, he pushes him against the bed. When he opens his eyes, Brad is kneeling on the patchwork quilt with his head hanging down. There are scratches showing red against tan skin. Nate bends his head and kisses that raw skin. He pretends that they're still somehow equal. 

“In the duffle,” says Brad.  
“What?” says Nate, pressing one hand against his temple, trying to stop the spinning in his head.   
“There's condoms and lube in the duffle,” says Brad, weight leaned forward on his elbows, head still hanging down.

Nate steps away from the bed long enough to fumble in the bag. He shoves down his combats on the way back, scattering foil packets across the bed in his hurry to drag Brad's jeans down too. 

“Get yourself ready,” he says, shoving the lube into Brad's hands as he bites open a foil packet and rolls it down over his dick. He watches as Brad makes short work of it, as he works slippery fingers into himself, as he rocks back against his own hand and, all the time, his pale eyes are fixed on Nate's face.

“That's enough,” Brad says, his voice tight, his knees spread wide. “I'm ready.”

Dick in his hand, Nate doesn't hesitate, he lines up and pushes as deep into Brad as he can get with one shove of his hips. And it has to be like this, has to be, because the way they fuck now is more important than ever. Nate fucks Brad hard and slow and deep, his hands hard on his hips, pulling Brad back onto his cock and every movement, every thrust and shift and stifled moan is code, is pidgin tongue for one simple thing.   
You're mine. And that has always been the truth.

*

 

Here it is, baby: if America is a myth then it's one that everyone, the whole rest of the world needs to believe in. Sea to shining sea, the song goes. On a satellite photograph of the earth, the seas are dark but America bleeds light, its streets and freeways a vast nervous system, the dark places pockets of lymph and plasma. The cities look like human hearts, complicated but beautiful, many chambered. America feels too much to only have one.

Remember: I was born in the darkness, so I was born hungrier than you.

*

 

In the middle of the night, he finds a light still burning in the kitchen and Doc Bryan and Poke sitting in companionable silence with a beer each. He fetches himself one from the refrigerator before he joins them. It's warm in the kitchen and he's comfortable in t-shirt and shorts. The tiles are cool against the soles of his bare feet.

“You'll die waiting for him to tell you the whole story, LT,” says Poke, who insists on calling Nate that despite the fact that Nate hasn't outranked him in a long time because neither of them are Marines any more. “They aren't really the 'whole story' kind of people.”

“It's just not in their nature,” says Doc Bryan, scraping at the label on his bottle with his thumb. “It's got to do with distance; they've come a long fucking way and they've forgotten how to explain themselves.” He punctuates with a long swallow of beer. “It doesn't mean they love you any less. But it's okay to be really fucking pissed off by them, from time to time.”

He thinks about that for a moment, turning his bottle between his fingers before he takes a sip. It's probably a bad idea; he can still feel the effect of the wine from dinner but he's not sure that he cares.

“They'll tell you what they want you to know, LT. Like, my girl? Was all about motherhood, man,” says Poke, and he can't keep the pride out of his voice. “Goddess of life, death and motherfucking rebirth. Makes sense that she's a midwife now, right?”

“I was lying in bed with Sharahah and she started telling me about her old life,” says Doc Bryan, the label all but shredded now, discarded on the table. “Temples all along the Euphrates and sacred fucking prostitutes. How it felt to be loved and adored by every fucker.” A smile touches the corner of his mouth. “She says she likes her life better now. She's worried what it's going to mean for the kid.”

“Mike's not even one of them, not really. He's always just liked a fight.” Poke leans back in his chair, laughing. “No wonder he chose the Marines.”

“What about Ray and Beth?”

“Clusterfuck,” supplies Doc Bryan. “They've been fucking each other over for years but they can't leave each other alone. He makes her laugh. Apparently, that's enough.”

“And we're supposed to just sit here?” asks Nate, looking at both of them in turn. “No Sit Rep, no SOP. We're just...supposed to sit here and wait out the end of the world?”

“Nobody's come here to sit anything out, Nate,” says Doc Bryan and Nate feels it all settle heavily and painfully on his chest. As a Marine, he'd always been comfortable with the fact that he could die; it was part of the job description. Whenever he tried to picture Brad dying, though, it was as though as part of himself tried to curl in on itself.

It wasn't helpful.

With a fire-fight looming, the only thing that he can do is hope and focus and do the best with what he's given.

He finishes his beer.

“I'm going back to bed,” he tells them and they both nod. Neither of them make any move to follow.

“Gonna sit here and watch the sun come up, LT,” says Poke, stretching both arms up over their head.

It's a vigil, more than anything.  
Nate leaves them to it.

*

 

Just before dawn, unable to sleep any longer, Nate opens the front door and steps outside, suddenly dizzy and sick in a way that he hasn't been since he started spending time on ships, desperately in need of air. He finds Ray sitting on the step, kicked clear of snow, a half-drunk bottle of Jack Daniels cradled between his feet. He looks up and gives Nate a watery smile.

“Hey, LT,” he says.  
“Aren't we a bit past that, Ray?” says Nate, sliding down to sit on the step beside him.  
“That's the fucking thing about it, Sir,” says Ray, with a roll of one skinny shoulder. “No matter how done you think you are with shit, it's always coming around again. There's a reason that they call every turn of the wheel a revolution, Holmes.”

Without asking, Nate reaches out and takes the bottle. The liquor is chill in his mouth. It's good.

“I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow,” he says.

Ray shrugs again and reaches out to take the bottle back.

“Just about the finest firefight that you've ever seen, LT. Fields of fire. Machineries of fucking war.” He smiles and rubs at the back of his hand. “It's only the end of the world again, Nate. Nothing to write home about.”

Nate rubs his bottom lip with his thumb; it's difficult to know whether it's the alcohol or the cold that's making him feel numb.

“Who were you before?” he asks, feeling like it's incredibly rude to ask but also that he has to know, gather what information he can. He's always had this passion to understand the change in the world; he thinks that maybe that's why he joined the Marines in the first place.

“Trickster,” says Ray, with a shit-eating grin. “Every religion's got one.” He holds out his hand. “Nate Fick...Loki fuckin' Liesmith. You've probably heard of me.”

All that Nate can do is sickly nod his head as he reaches out and shakes Ray's hand.

“Me and Brad go way, way back, Holmes. And what I can tell you for certain is this: whatever happens tomorrow, we're not done here.”

He stretches his arm upwards, his spine arching like a cat's.

“I'm going to bed to fuck my girl,” he says. “End of the world sex is the fucking best.”

When he's gone, Nate takes another long swallow of liquor. He leaves the bottle lying in the snow like a sentry.

*

 

As the sun's coming up, he showers. He's not surprised at all when Brad steps in behind him. There's no sex in the touches, only a quiet reverence; it feels like Brad's trying to learn him by heart. Nate leans back against the tiled wall and lets Brad's hands roam where they will. Brad has this look of intense concentration on his face.

“Tell me what's going to happen,” he says.  
Brad shrugs one tan shoulder.

“I wish I knew, Nate. Maybe, somewhere, I do know. But, in this Universe, right now? I just know that, when they come, we go out to meet them, and we hope that we're enough.”

Nate sighs and sways forward, his forehead coming to fit against Brad's shoulder like it was made to lie there. Brad cradles the back of his skull with curled fingers. Nate tries to find the words to say I love you and I didn't figure that out soon enough and I'm sorry for that; more than anything, that's what I'm sorry for but, in the end, he can't and so he stays silent instead. His fingers skate against the inked skin in the small of Brad's back. He pulls him closer convulsively.

“What about us?”   
He hates the plaintive note in his voice when he says it.

“It's not about you,” says Brad, turning his face and kissing Nate's temple. “It was never about you.”

“People believed in you,” insists Nate. “Some people still must.”

Brad's pulling away, reaching for a towel.

“Nate, you of all people ought to understand the difference between believing in something and just knowing that it's true.”

“Why do I feel like you're angry with me?”  
“Don't, Nate.”

Brad's out of the shower and walking back into the bedroom. Nate stands there naked and dripping, alone, feeling the chill in the air. 

“What is this, Brad?”

He bends, snatching at the t-shirt that he took off to get into the shower in the first place, pulling it on over damp skin. He scrubs his hand back through his hair, scattering droplets.

“This is the end of the fucking world, Nate,” says Brad, turning on his heel. “This is me wanting to guarantee that I could keep you safe and knowing that I can't, and Gina can't, either. Sharahah. Beth. We're all fucked, Nate and all that we can do is hope that we aren't about to take you down with us. Because we're different from you and we can't take you where we're going to have to go. ” Brad's jaw tightens. “This is what it looks like when people really make do, Nate.”

“I've got the same training as you, Brad.”  
“What makes you think that that's going to make any difference here, Nate?”

They stare at each other for a long time before Nate turns his back and pulls on his jeans without underwear. He tugs on a hoodie over his t-shirt. He sits on the foot of the bed and watches Brad get dressed.

“I love you,” he says, finally.   
Brad bends from the waist and catches his face with one hand, dragging him in for a kiss.

“I know,” he murmurs, so close that his lips are still brushing Nate's. “I love you too.”  
Nate can feel them both wishing that that was enough.

*

 

That's great: it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplanes - Lenny Bruce is not afraid.

In the kitchen, Ray's singing while he makes pancakes.

At the table, Beth's painting her fingernails black, pausing to carefully tidy up her cuticles with a cotton bud that smells strongly of alcohol. Doc Bryan's helping to guide Sharahah into yoga poses. Gina's folding laundry and Mike's helping her. It's all so domestic, so quiet. It's a thin veneer of normalcy, though – Nate knows that. 

Nobody talks.

“They're not going to get here,” says Beth eventually without looking up from her nails. “They're coming, but they're not going to get here in time.”

“That's as maybe,” says Mike, carefully, folding a sheet against his chest. “Strikes me that we've got a job to do here, whether they make it or not.”

“The odds don't bother you?”

Mike shrugs.

“Sometimes, you just gotta bet, even when you know you oughta be folding.”

A wave of nausea hits Nate and he has to sit down. He rests his head against the back of his hand. He starts when he feels cool fingers on the back of his neck.

“Listen, baby,” says Gina, thumb stroking against his pulse. “These things have happened here before and they're sure as shit going to happen again. Some of us have got roles in this and some of us haven't but one thing's sure in life: you spend more time that you ought to doing the things that you have to. You ought to know that by now, Nate Fick.”

He swallows against the sudden lump in his throat.

“Yes, Ma'am,” he says. 

Breakfast is put in front of him; he eats what he can. When Brad sits in the chair next to him, Nate gropes under the table. Their fingers thread together. Sitting there, it strikes him that the kitchen is the heart of the house, beating, throbbing and that they're just circulating and biding time.

He's sitting there for almost an hour before he notices.  
Outside, the snow has stopped falling.

*

 

My love. Oh, my love. I came so far to find you. I longed for so many years until I was at your side. Once, I remember, I lay awake beside you and I wondered how many things had to be exactly so for us to end up here, side by side, with your fingers still sticky and intertwined with mine. 

Chance always had a place in this.

People make the mistake of thinking of new worlds as a one way street, like journeys made across oceans can't be made back again. It's more romantic if you think of it like that, I suppose, but what I want you to remember is this: that you were my destiny and that I had nothing left to miss before I had you. And I would make any number of back and forths for you. My love. Oh, my love.

Remember that you are strong, my darling. Walk away from this place, if you can, and do not grieve. Or do not grieve too much.

The new world was never a one way street.  
I'm not done here, yet. So keep your heart faithful.  
There can be returning.

*

 

“No weapons that we can wield,” says Poke, pausing in the doorway to pull his coat in tighter around himself. “This just isn't that kind of shit-storm, LT.”

In the shadow of the house, he watches them suit up. Mike works his fingers into a pot of vein-blue woad and daubs it onto his skin in whorls and loops. He straps a sword almost as tall as he is across his shoulders. Gina is tall and lovely, bloody hand prints across her bare belly and thighs. She carries silver knives in both hands. Beth tests the string on a long, graceful bow. Ray sharpens a blade while Sharahah leans her weight against the height of a spear. 

And Brad shifts a great iron hammer in his hands.

Nate buttons his pea-coat, tugs his scarf in closer around him. The snow has stopped but that's only made the cold feel deeper. It's an old sort of cold. Nate has never minded winter; it comes, it goes, the snow melts and the leaves come out again in Cambridge. This winter, though. It makes him think of permafrost.

There are parts of the world that never thaw.

The ice on the lake is thick and clouded. Stepping onto it for the first time, Nate imagines that he can see a face frozen in it. Boy or girl, he can't tell. He looks again and figures that he must have been mistaken.

It stays with him, anyway.

They walk out together, a line of them across the ice. He's got no idea what's about to happen here. He's got no idea how this is supposed to go. He can't help but think about that night on the bridge, chaos happening in the dark and running and running and his heart, his heart. He remembers catching a glimpse of Brad through the windscreen. He remembers Ray shouting.

Nobody speaks, nobody shouts, and the weak sunlight slanting down.

“What do I do here?” he asks Brad. With his dark scarf wrapped twice around his neck, huddled in his leather, Brad looks even bigger than he normally does. He looks at Nate for a long moment and then he smiles. 

“Everything you can, Nate,” he says, quietly. “Anything you can. You make it better, if you can. You help it be easier.”  
“There were supposed to be others here?”

Brad nods.

“Yeah, there were. There always fucking are. But they'll come too late or not at all like usual. We can hold on for ourselves.”

Nate wishes that he believed that.  
He frowns.

“How many times has this happened, Brad?”  
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

On the ice, Brad turns to him and pulls him in for a kiss. His lips are chill and slightly chapped. He's dimly aware of the same thing going on all around them; Doc Bryan pauses with his hand on Sharahah's belly; Ray cradles Beth's face with both hands; Gina's long earrings make a soft, musical sound as she leans in to kiss Poke's cheek.

“Whatever happens,” says Brad, quietly, “I loved you most.”

There's a quiet pause. The wind builds. Nate remembers waiting on the bridge, the moment of quiet before the gunfire started. He counts to ten and there's nothing but the beating of his heart and thunder rips through the day. He ducks his head instinctively.

When he lifts his head again, everything's changed. At his side, Brad is taller, paler, dressed in furs and leather. Ray throws his head back and laughs, his fingers dancing with fire. Beth towers over him, his eyes white from edge to edge. Gina's mouth is bloody and dark.

And there's more of them. They're here in time and lining up against the edges of the lake, drawing their battle lines and they are the strangest, most beautiful thing that Nate has ever seen. A woman with white blond hair checks her nails; twin crows take off from the shoulders of a man with an eye-patch and a rusty red beard. There is a woman in a red and gold sari casting bones in the snow. They stretch as far as the eye can see. He watches as a girl with black hair and black tattoos leans up and kisses Mike on the mouth. 

They're there. The gods are everywhere. And Nate's sorry for anything that he ever did or didn't believe.

He squints, trying to make out an enemy, but all that he can see is swooping shadows and a sound like the howling of wolves. Over the years, he's learned to trust instinct above all things and his spine is tight and the hair on the back of his neck is prickling and he tries to keep Brad in his eye-line, he really does, but in the end all that he can hear is the beat of his heart like a kettle drum.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears Brad over comms, talking about men in the trees.

“What do we do?” he shouts to Doc Bryan, who's squaring his shoulders, his eyes fixed on Sharahah's profile. As Nate watches, she pulls her coat closer over the graceful curve of the life within her.

“We watch and we wait,” he says. “And when it all goes to shit, which it will, we stand our ground. And we do the best we can.”

Nate nods.  
They wait. The gods wait.

The world pauses for a moment.

All hell breaks loose at once. It's like the world explodes outwards. He ducks, expecting the whole of the sky to end up on his head and ends up on his belly on the ice, head down. He sees shadows pass over him but, mostly, he hears the screaming; some of it sounds human, some of it sounds like nothing he's ever heard. Blood splatters across the back of one hand. A head skitters across the surface of the lake like a skipped stone. It takes him a long moment to realise that it's nobody that he recognises. In the Corps, he shot people without even breathing but, now, he stares at the severed head like he's never seen death before.

“You want to help, Nate?” shouts Doc Bryan, suddenly at his elbow and breathing hard.

Nate finds himself nodded.

“When I tell you to run, you run, okay?”

He's already pushing to his feet. He crouches, watches the lighting split the flat, grey sky. He sees someone in silhouette heft a hammer and then throw it farther than ought to be possible. Raised Catholic, he was never a man who put much stock in praying, but he finds a prayer on his lips then, all the same. His heart jumps. He loses Brad in the battle again.

And Doc Bryan tells him to run, so he runs until his legs are screaming and his lungs are aching. The air stinks of sulphur and ash. He skids to a halt. There's that girl with a wing of hair across her eyes, black ink tattoos which seem to swim and dance on her arms; she was the one who kissed Mike on the lips before the battle. Doc Bryan's applying pressure to a wound. He guides Nate's hands against her pulse and tells him to stay there.

Her blood pumps warm against Nate's hands. She presses her slick fingers over his. Her grey eyes are cloudy and dim.

“This is a fine death, boy,” she says, quietly. “This is a death to be proud of.”

And he feels the moment that she dies.

They keep going and he ends up bloody to the elbows by the time he's got Ray cradled against his chest. He breathes harshly, blood bubbling against his lips. When he was a lieutenant, he used to dream about car-bombs and RPG attacks. He used to nightmare about sitting in the dust at the side of the road and cradling the broken body of one of his men close to him. Now that it's actually happening, he finds himself weirdly peaceful. Ray reaches back and his bloody fingers touch the hair at the back of Nate's head.

“Tell Skadi I fucking loved her,” he mumbles.  
“Who?” asks Nate.

Doc Bryan rips into a packet with his teeth, stabs Ray in the thigh with a styrette.

“Beth,” he says, quietly. “He means Beth.” He smooths one hand against Ray's forehead, surprisingly gently. “I'll tell her you'll see her soon, Ray. You must be tired, man. Sleep now, okay? Rest your head.”

After Ray dies, it all speeds up. The bodies line up and, sometimes, Doc Bryan does no more than crouch down beside them to check their pulses. He wipes his bloodied hands on his pants. He moves on.

They find Mike nearly cut in two, with a sword still in his numb hands and a crow perched on his chest. He's bound himself to the rock with his belt. Nate pauses for a moment, cups the back of Mike's head with his fingers and leans their foreheads together. Brother, he thinks. My brother. By the time they find Gina and Poke curled in on each other, lying side by side, he's almost too weary to feel grief. He's numb and hollow on the inside. He has felt everything that he is ever going to feel. Nate pauses for a second and brushes Gina's hair back from her cheek. He tucks the heart necklace inside the neckline of her shirt.

He's lost track of how long they've been fighting; it could be hours or minutes. He's lost track of how long the whole thing's been going on for; there's so much death and dying to be seen. His head aches with it. His heart is a beating wound in his chest.

The lightning splits the sky again. The battlefield is dark and still. There are a great many bodies. Some of them look more like wolves than others. It's a bloodbath; it's a massacre. Nate feels sick to his stomach; he retches, but nothing comes.

It's over as soon as it started.  
It feels like it's been going on for his whole life.

“Who won?” he asks Doc Bryan as they stand there, surrounded by the dead and the dying. Sharahah walks towards them, her tattooed arms bare in the chill air. She's limping on her left leg. Doc shrugs out of his coat and drapes it around her shoulders.

“Nobody won, sweetheart,” she says, pushing at the weight of her dark hair, tangled and snarled around her face. “These things are never about really about who wins and loses.”

“Then what?”

In the west, the sun is finally starting to sink. Sharahah watches it and a tear runs down her face.

“That, sweetheart,” she says. “Just that. It's about the world going on like it's supposed to. The sun still rises and it stills mean the same thing as it did yesterday. And we do it whenever we have to. And it hurts every single time.”

Nate nods like he understands and he's still nodding when he looks up and sees Brad staggering towards them, blood staining his shirt and his jeans. He manages nine steps towards them before his knees give out and he tumbles. He hits the ice so hard that Nate feels winded but he's already running, boots slipping and scraping on the ice, and he keeps his feet until he's skidding to a stop at Brad's side.

“Oh, Jesus,” he mumbles, dragging Brad into his lap. “Oh, don't.”  
“It's okay, Nate,” says Brad, fumbling, reaching up to touch the side of his face. “It's okay.” 

It's so cold that Nate's tears feel boiling hot as they roll down his face. He wipes at them with the back of his free hand. The other arm is trapped beneath Brad's dead weight.

“You're not supposed to leave me,” he mumbles. “It's not supposed to end like this.”  
“It was always supposed to end like this.”

Brad coughs. There's blood on his chin.

“You are not supposed to fucking leave me,” says Nate, crying properly now, tears rolling down his face and splashing onto Brad's leather. “We're supposed to figure this out together. You're a fucking Marine, hoo-rah?”

“I never walk away from this, Nate,” says Brad, and he can barely breathe for coughing now. “Why break. Why break the habit of a lifetime?” 

He reaches up to cup the side of Nate's face and pulls him down into a dry kiss.

“Semper Fi, Nate.”

“Don't,” says Nate, but it's too late. Brad's blue eyes go distant and vacant. He slips and Nate can't keep hold of him. He sits there for a long time, knees bent, Brad's body cradled against him, and the cold seeps into both of them. And he wishes he knew the story. He's a classicist; he knows all about Rome and Greece, but the Vikings never really interested him. He doesn't know how this is supposed to end. He doesn't have a fucking clue.

And Nate's head is bent so he doesn't see when, one by one, the stars wink out and leave the sky still and dark and always.

*

_In other words: there are more worlds than these._

_Once, a long time ago, men crossed an ocean in long boats and they found a new world but the new world forgot all about them. But we were there, in our tents and then in our house by the lake and I was many things and my heart was always faithful._

_These are the facts. The rest is just the story._

_I met you like a part of myself. I met you like something that had always been missing. Listen: at the end of the world, there was a field where they met and they talked about what would come next. You never needed us. You_ never _needed us._

_In other words: the hell of loving other people was never enough to stop us.  
In other words: wait for me, love._

_It's difficult for a thing like us to stay dead for long._

_We change, like whispers.  
We grow, in the telling._

*

Nothing's changed and yet everything's different. It's weeks before he returns to Cambridge, wearing a leather jacket with blood staining the lining, his boots loosely laced. The thaw has started, the snow slushing and melting, grey and ugly. It's a comfort, all the same. It's a relief. It feels like the world getting ready to start again.

He carries a notebook filled with Brad's neat handwriting shoved into the side pocket of his duffle. It's a long story but, mostly, it's an elaboration on things that he already knows. 

He goes back to school when it reopens, shoulders his book bag and goes to his classes faithfully but he pauses when he hears an engine gunning in the street. 

He waits.

When he gets the call, he takes the train to Philadelphia, waiting in New York for forty minutes, and he walks to the little house where Sharahah and Tim have just brought home their new baby; Sharahah was carrying a little girl and they name her Grace. Nate holds her in his arms and stands in the kitchen window. He picks out constellations for her and tells her star stories.

“Are you going to tell her?” he asks Tim, who's standing at the sink, finishing up the dishes from dinner.

“Maybe,” he says, leaning back against the counter. “When she's old enough. It'll all sound like a fairytale, anyway.”

Nate nods, rubbing his hand against Grace's back.

Later, sitting on the porch with her curled against his chest, he starts to tell her about Brad Colbert, the Brad that he always knew, Iceman, best T.L that he could hope for, quiet and capable and walking down the beach towards the sea. He tells her about how he's waiting but he doesn't quite know what _for_.

He's surprised when it helps.

“You should have seen them,” he says, quietly, pressing the words against her curling dark hair. “You should have seen the way they stood against the sky.” She makes a soft sound and he gives her the tip of his finger to suck on. In the kitchen, he can hear Sharahah singing. “I keep expecting to see him everywhere but I don't think it really works like that.” He laughs at himself and she just keeps looking up at him with big dark eyes. “I don't really know how any of this works. Somebody...told me once that there's a reason that they call every...turn of the wheel a revolution. I'm just...I hope that's true, Grace. I really do.”

Behind him, he hears the stairs give under somebody's weight. Sharahah bends from the waist and presses a kiss into his hair.

“There is no rhyme or reason to anything in this world, Nate Fick,” she says, gently. “Life is shit but it also has moments of brilliance and, usually, that's enough.”

He's smiling against the now familiar sting in his eyes when he hands her the baby back. 

“Come inside,” she says.  
“I'll be in in a minute,” he promises.

He stays on the step and he watches the stars and he waits.


End file.
